Zach's Law by Kay Hooper Page A

agonized question in her mind.
    She hadn’t realized they were so close, and burst through into the clearing surrounding the house without being able to stop herself. Immediately a whining bullet chipped bark from the tree to her left, and from her right, rising with a crash from the undergrowth, lunged Zach.
    Between one heartbeat and the next, Teddy knew with haunting despair that she herself had blindly invited the reality of the image she had seen with such distortion. With every fiber of her being she had known that Zach could take care of himself, would be canny and cautious, but that he would instantly and without thought shield her with his own body from danger, yet she had rashly placed herself in just that position.
    A sharp report and the hollow thud of a bullet striking flesh, and scarlet blood …
    If only she had remained in the cabin.
    And in that instant, between one heartbeat and the next, she twisted violently in an irrevocable attempt to change what had to be.
    Her lightning movement threw Zach off-balance, and he, too, was twisting in midair, reaching out for her, a raw, despairing terror tightening the muscles of his face. And he almost got her, his outstretched hand reaching her arm. But he jerked her around before he pulled her down with him, and when her back was to the house, in that fleeting second another shot rang out.
    Zach wasted no time. With an arm around her waist he hauled her back into the undergrowth, his big automatic bucking in his hand. The sound of it was deafening as he fired behind them and tried to pin down the gunman. Then the house was lost from sight, and he lifted her into his arms and carried her swiftly through the woods toward the cabin.
    “What the
hell
are you doing out here?”he demanded in a furious, shaking voice. “Dammit, Teddy, you could have been killed!”
    “I was worried about you,” she said very softly, staring up at his white face.
    He said something violently explicit between gritted teeth.
    She had left the door open, and Zach carried her inside and set her on her feet, reaching back to slam it shut behind them. “We’ve got a few minutes at least,” he said, still angry. “I winged the bastard just before you came diving into it, so I doubt he’ll come hunting us in a hurry—”
    Teddy felt very peculiar. She was cold and couldn’t seem to feel the floor beneath her feet, and the most appalling weakness was spreading throughout her body.
Shock
, she realized vaguely.
I’m in shock
. She looked down at the floor as the sound of the door slamming shook the cabin, and bemusedly watched tiny splashes of scarlet color the rough wooden planking beside her boots, and she idly wondered why her fingers were red, too, and whyher arm was so heavy and why Zach’s voice seemed to be fading into the depths of some bottomless cave.…
    “Teddy!”
    He caught her as she swayed, lifted her, and carried her to the bed where he covered her with blankets. When she opened her eyes, Zach was ripping her left sleeve from cuff to shoulder. He swore steadily in an odd monotone and seemed a bit clumsy when he hurried to get the first-aid kit. Teddy thought about that from the distant reaches of her vast detachment.
    Zach wasn’t clumsy.
    How odd.
    She came back to herself with a painful suddenness that made her gasp. Her arm was still heavy, but now it throbbed with fire and she could see why when she looked at it. The gauze Zach was using to wipe her skin was stained bright red, and there was an ugly gash that ran from her elbow almost to her shoulder. Fascinated in a horrified way, she saw that the bullet had torn into her sleeve just above the elbow,plowed a furrow up her arm, and torn its way out at her shoulder.
    She remembered the moment she’d been shot. She had been off-balance, yanked around by Zach’s lunge, her arm thrown up. She remembered the burning sensation in her arm, barely noticed at the time. And she realized that if she had not jerked backward